The Equalizer – Equal to Any Bollywood Crap

Hollywood A-listerDenzel Washington has often whined that Indian cabbies don’t stop for him in New York City.

After sitting through Denzel’s new movie Equalizer in quiet fury this evening, I decided the whiner was not going to win any sympathy from me.

Folks, Equalizer works very hard to match the Bollywood junk that Indian directors shovel our way ad nauseam.

Based on a three-decade-old TV series, Equalizer is the dreadful handiwork of director Antoine Fuqua (of Training Day fame, the movie that got Denzel his Best Actor Oscar).

Not Worth It

Equalizer is a one-man show – Denzel, Denzel and more Denzel.

Denzel as a middle-aged employee of a large home improvement store (think Home Depot), Denzel reading Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea late night at a 24-hour diner, Denzel motivating his co-worker to get a job as security guard, Denzel making small talk with a young Russian hooker Yelena (Chloë Grace Moretz) at the diner, Denzel making mincement of the Russian Mafia in Boston and Denzel bringing down a dreaded criminal oligarch in Moscow.

All of it tiresome! Totally.

After 30 minutes of the phony stuff at work, home and in the diner, the controlled, quiet Robert McCall (played by Denzel, of course) gets into controlled, violent overdrive. Reason – His late-night hooker pal at the diner Yelena is severely beaten by her Russian pimps for daring to step out of line.

Meant as a lesson to the other hookers, the assault on Yelena snaps our hero and we now see him in different colors.

In less time than you’d take to pull up your zipper, an unarmed Robert kills five heavily armed members of the Russian Mafia.

Misbegotten Junk

The rest of the movie is Denzel killing members of the Russian Mafia in Boston one after another in as vicious a manner as possible. In one gory killing, the cork-screw driver pierces the neck and come out of the Russian’s mouth.

The last 20-minutes or so featuring the fight between the Russian gang and our hero in the home improvement store was so tedious, so long and so boring.

After the last Russian is killed in the home improvement shop, I hoped for the lights to come on.

Alas, no such luck.

Our hero heads to Moscow to finish off the Russian oligarch, the mastermind of the Boston crime syndicate.

And guess what? Denzel finishes him off like we’d swat a fly. Never mind that a Russian oligarch has more security than the President of the United States.

The entire Equalizer affair is plainly, utterly stupid.

The huge minus of this film is the atrocious threadbare script.

Not even a dozen Denzels can rescue this misbegotten junk of a one-man demolition-squad.

Chloë Grace Moretz has no role to speak of save a few minutes at the beginning and 60 seconds at most at the end.

Equalizer will easily strike a chord with Chutiyas because it’s as terrible as the Bollywood garbage they bilge on every Friday.